Yaya Touré suffered racism abuse while playing for Manchester City against CSKA Moscow in October 2013. Photograph: Jed Leicester/Action Images

Fifa is to announce a new system of match observers to monitor incidents of racism and discrimination at World Cup qualifiers in the buildup to the 2018 tournament in Russia.

The observers will be trained to spot incidents of discrimination and report them to Fifa, which can then impose disciplinary sanctions on the countries involved.

Host country Russia has said it will tackle racism in its football. Some 200 racist incidents were committed by Russian fans between 2012 and 2014 according to a recent report by the Sova Center, a Moscow-based racism-monitoring group.

The project follows recommendations of the Fifa anti-discrimination taskforce and is being implemented in collaboration with the European anti-discrimination body Fare.

Fifa president Sepp Blatter has said “a lot of work needs to be done” to combat the incidents.